


Sonnet Sunglasses

by Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Library Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 10:12:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5330318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw/pseuds/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Clara and the Doctor settle a dispute over a book of sonnets by being adorable and reciting poetry at one another.</p>
<p>Subsequently, there is sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sonnet Sunglasses

Clara glares at her course syllabus as if it has personally offended her. Bad enough she's still pretending to care about her non-Doctor life; this is just insult to injury. She thinks she knows what plays she wants to teach, what novels, what short stories. But the poetry unit is giving her grief. The problem is not that she cannot call any poems to mind: would that she had that problem. Then, perhaps, she could think clearly. Instead, coursing through her are the flowing stanzas of the Arcateen, spoken word from three centuries in the future, a Viking epic the only copy of which resides in the TARDIS library (a gift from Ejnar for his daughter's life), and a sonnet Jane Austen composed extemporaneously, never committing it to such a rude medium as paper, tracing it only on the parchment of her skin. 

Wait, Clara thinks. “Sonnets,” she says aloud. She glances at her syllabus and realizes she hasn't got any Shakespeare in it yet, which she's pretty sure is a capital offense for a high school English lit course, and pads off in her tights through the TARDIS, folding her syllabus into the breast pocket of the dress shirt she's confiscated from the Doctor. Now, she just has to remember how the library is organized...

***

The Doctor frowns, wiping the chalkboard clear of his abortive attempt at lyrics. He spins the board over and sketches out the next few steps on the quantum-temporal equation he's solving, the click and the smell of the chalk ordinarily reassuring. Now, however, they simply remind him of his utter failure to match words to melody. Glowering, he swings his axe back in front and strums his way through the tune again. Short, kind of feisty...he shakes his head and plays the last two lines again. Iambic pentameter, he realizes. Maybe he should just take a sonnet and adapt it to the melody. He plucks a power chord and smiles. Yeah, he thinks as the notes fade, head bobbing pleasurably, punk rock sonnets. He likes the idea more and more as he half-walks, half-dances towards the library, scarlet lining of his coat flickering out as he moves. Maybe he could do a whole album of sonnets. Clara would like that, he thinks.

***

Clara has finally found the section she wants, and she trails down the aisle, her attention on the unfamiliar names on the spines, making mental notes of interesting tomes to try. But now she's about to get what she wants, and her hand closes over the leather binding. 

Almost instantly, another hand closes over hers. “Doctor?” she asks before she even turns to look at him, recognizing the calluses and the feel of the chalk dust on his dry skin. 

“Clara,” he replies warmly, hand not moving, his breath cool on her cheek. She notices—can't help but notice—that his hand does not leave hers. “You've got my book.”

“You've got my hand,” she counters, pivoting to face him directly, maintaining just enough distance that she can look comfortably up at him, never relinquishing her grasp on the book. “And I need it to plan my syllabus.”

“I need it for the lyrics for my concept album,” the Doctor counters. 

“The semester starts next Monday!”

“Time machine,” the Doctor reminds her. “Besides, it's not like your pudding-brains will appreciate it. Why don't you go fetch them some Shel Silverstein?” he asks derisively. 

“Wait, you're doing a concept album?” she asks, nose wrinkling. “Of sonnets?” She chews on this for a moment, wonders if her students would 'appreciate' that. “That's kind of cool.” She can feel some tension release in his hand, still clasped around hers. Still, neither of them particularly wants to back down, their competitive, dominant natures coming out. Best when they could turn them against their enemies, but oh so fun when the sparks fly against one another.

“What about a contest?” he offers, thumb swirling invitingly against her wrist. Damn him, she thinks as the grin involuntarily crosses her face. “We each get the book for three minutes, then I pick a sonnet for you; you pick a sonnet for me. Winner keeps the book.”

“Winner?” 

“The most appropriate,” he clarifies, “to our natures and our...feelings...for one another,” he concludes, trying not to sound like a complete sap. 

“Game. On.”

 

Six minutes later...

 

“Would this be a bad time to mention that using one of the Dark Lady sonnets would be incredibly awkward as they were inspired by a friend of mine?” the Doctor begins. 

“You never told me that!” Clara cries, eyes wide, swatting him on the arm. Oops, she thinks.

“It never came up.” His voice deceptively guileless. 

“Fine.” She tries not to pout. “You want to go first?”

He accepts with the barest tip of the head. “'My glass shall not persuade me I am old   
So long as youth and thou are of one date;  
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,  
Then look I death my days should expiate.  
For all the beauty that doth cover thee,  
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,  
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:  
How can I then be elder than thou art?  
O! Therefore, love, be of thyself so wary  
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;  
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary  
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.  
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,  
Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.”

“Ooh,” she says appreciatively. “Not bad.” She is genuinely moved despite her glib facade, has always had a bit of a weakness for professorial types reciting poetry, and closes her eyes as she begins to recite: “My love is as a fever longing still,   
For that which longer nurseth the disease;  
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,  
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.  
My reason, the physician to my love,  
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,  
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve  
Desire is death, which physic did except.  
Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,  
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;  
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,  
At random from the truth vainly expressed;  
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,  
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.” She grins. “Sorry, it was either that or “shall I compare thee to a summer's day?” which is so cliché, don't you think?”

“Damn,” he growls. “You may take that one.”

“You know,” she says, eyes bright, tempting, “we could share it. Maybe you could help me devise a unit on updating and adapting classic literature. Later.”

“Later?” He asks, briefly confused. She takes a handful of his loose t-shirt in her fist and pulls him down. “Later,” he agrees, hands cupping her cheeks so he can return the kiss. “'Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,/ As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;/ For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart/ Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel,'” he recites as she tugs him along to the nearest couch, a gorgeous, Roman-style thing upholstered in a soft, velvety material that reminds her of the coat he sometimes wears. Not that he's wearing any coat any more, she observes approvingly, noting where it falls so she can steal it and curl up in it later.

“'When I behold the violet past prime,/ and sable curls, all silvered o'er with white,'” she retorts appreciatively as he pulls off his Bowie concert tee. “Not that I think you're past your prime,” she appends, ghosting her fingers down through the pale tuft on his pale chest to the belt of his plaid trousers. 

“Oh, good,” he mutters sardonically. “Now all I have to complain about is the fact that you're still wearing all your clothes.”

“Wrong,” she teases, tugging her tights and her knickers down over her hips and to the floor, “I'm just wearing your clothes.”

“Mm,” he observes cogently as she shoves him back onto the couch, trying to control his breathing by calculating the ever increasing area of the even, tanned triangle opening between the hems of his dark purple shirt. He reaches up to guide it from her shoulders, chalk from his fingers smudging on the silky fabric, causing it to rustle and catch on her nipples, which jut out, small and proud, just like the rest of her. They don't bounce much as she shimmies up and over him, hand down to urge his erection into her.

“Oh, fuck,” she hisses into his ear, poetry long gone for brutal, banal prose. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she repeats as she does just that, riding him until he comes for her, body blazing hot against his. Finally, she smiles, planting a possessive love bite on his collarbone and pressing her body to his chest as she feels him seep out of her. 

“'In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,/ For they in thee a thousand errors note;/ But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,/ Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote.'”

“Bastard,” she says lovingly and snugs herself against him.

**Author's Note:**

> Look me in the eyes and tell me these saps don't recite love poems at each other in between adrenaline rushes. 
> 
> Also I appear to have a slight head-canon in which Clara steals Twelve's clothes, especially after sex. So, basically constantly.
> 
> For the curious, the quotations are all from William Shakespeare's sonnets, which are either referred to by first line or by number:   
> The Doctor begins by quoting 22 in full; Clara counters with 147. The Doctor responds with a few lines from 131, and Clara manages to find an appropriate couplet from 12. The Doctor concludes with a few lines from 141.


End file.
